Monday, April 28, 2014

I
am a native of Luna. By what means I reached this earth I shall not, in this
brief narrative, explain. It is evident that I am here, this writing being
sufficient evidence thereof.

In
the ancient, powerful and glorious kingdom of Dementia. (whose flag has braved,
ten thousand years, the battle and the breeze) I was introduced as a
native-born citizen by my parents (and by gracious permission of the Royal
Clerics) in the year of Sanctity 72,942. One year previous to my birth, my
parents had purchased a right to become parents from the above-named Royal
Clerics; therefore I was legally introduced into Luna.

Before
I was one month old, I was carried to one of the offices of the Royal Clerical
Emporium, where my parents purchased the right to confer on me the name, Tcej Busa. The Royal Clerics performed a
solemn ceremony suitable and essential to the occasion. They lubricated my nose
with oil, and publicly informed Jupiter, Saturn and Mars that I was a legal
person, with a legal name, and that the regular fees required to establish any
person in such a legal position had been duly paid to, and pocketed by, the
only genuine agents of the only genuine Emporium.

Jupiter,
Saturn and Mars are (as all true Lunatics profess to believe) three persons of
one substance, power and eternity. Saturn is the breath of Jupiter, and Mars is
the breath of Jupiter and Saturn. Mars is of one substance, majesty and glory
with Jupiter and Saturn, very and eternal Sol. There is but one living and true
So], everlasting, without body, parts or passions; and this one Sol—having no
body nor parts—is composed of three persons: Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. Such is
the foundation of the simple, logical and sublime belief, of which the King of
Dementia is the Protector.

When
Sol created mankind he declared the work to be good; yet, strange to say,
mankind are born physically imperfect. Of course, this is not Sol’s fault; but
it is due to the obstinacy of mankind, who malevolently assume imperfect forms
previous to their birth. I was no exception to this lamentable rule, for I had
stubbornly caused myself to be born with two ears. In spite of the legality of
my conception, I was born in sin and shapen in iniquity. I, alone, was to
blame; for the marriage of my parents was sanctified by the Royal Clerics, and
Sol, our Creator, cannot err (Pelttileno
troflli newteh illimyt sloofno).

When
I was six weeks old, an order was issued by the King of Dementia and delivered
to my parents by one of his Detective Agents, commanding the removal of my left
ear, according to law; and my parents (who were not associates of the “silly
clique of anti-amputators") obeyed the order, and paid the fees.

[It
is necessary to explain, that a learned Royal Amputator had discovered that
cutting off the left ear was a certain preventative of boils. A patient might
suffer internally from poison or from the accumulation of waste matter, and
might die in consequence thereof, but no boils or pimples could appear on the
skin after the left ear had been amputated—successfully.]

My
left ear having been (“successfully”) removed from my head, I had surmounted
the third step of legal subjection. I was a legal inhabitant of Luna; I had a
legal name; I had a legal constitution. If I died before reaching the age of
discretion, I should be transformed into a miburehc—and
I couldn’t die of boils.

When
I was six years old, I was sent to a school, in which I was taught to spell,
write and cipher. I learned how to spell my name, but was never told what I was
or whence I came. After a time, however, I was informed by some boys that I was
found in a cabbage field, and mother confirmed the statement. When I asked my
Sunday-school teacher, he told me I was made of dust; and when I asked him who
made me, he said it was Sol,

Now
I was an exceedingly precocious boy, insomuch that I was often spoken of as the
meddlesome question-asker, and I asked many questions about Sol. I asked where
Sol was; and some told me he was in Heaven, and others said “he is
everywhere." Then I asked: “Is Sol alive?”
and was answered, “Yes, He is the ever-living Sol.” “But,” said I, “he—he can’t
move! There is no place to move to
when he is everywhere to begin with." Then I was reproved, and told that
something very dreadful was sure to happen to me.

At
another time, I asked: “Is Sol a person?
Has he—has he got a head?” For that
question I was punished, and was told to pray to Sol to give me faith and
knowledge; but I retorted: “If you have prayed and got the knowledge, why don’t
you tell me if Sol has got a head and legs and things like we have?"

Often,
I wanted to pray; but I had no idea of the being I was told to address. Praying
to the air, merely, seemed like praying to nothing. Then I reasoned—for, alas!
I was an unregenerate boy and was tempted by the omnipresent, everlasting
Serpent. I argued thus: “If Sol is everywhere, he cannot have any shape; and I cannot think of such a
being." Then I tried to pray, and I said: “Help me, oh Sol, of whom I know
nothing—of whom I cannot even think.”

The
fourth step of legal advancement was “Ratification." At the solemn
ceremony of nose-oiling, my parents had pledged their word that I believed all
the articles of the Saturnalian faith; and in consideration of that pledge, and
of other reasonable, faithful and veracious pledges (and a pecuniary fee) the
Royal Clerics had declared me Regenerate. Alas! I was a miserable little
sinner, a downright heretic!

The
inhabitants of the kingdom of Sundia did not profess to worship Sol, as we did;
but were idolatrous Heathen, who worshipped the universe; and therefore our
king sent an army of our people to conquer the Sundians. Our soldiers killed
many thousands of the Heathen, and burned their towns; but, after a few months,
our army was driven from the country with the army of the enemy following
closely behind. When our army in its retreat passed through the town I lived in
they set fire to it, to destroy it, so that the enemy might not get possession
of it. My parents died in the conflagration. I was having a day in the country,
and thus I escaped.

The
people talked of “the enemy” almost unceasingly; but I could not help thinking
that our greatest enemies were the King of Dementia and his hired agents, and I
laid to their charge the murder of my parents.

I
was adopted by an uncle, for whom I worked several years. I toiled hard for
scanty food, and was told that I should be grateful for the opportunity.

In
Dementia, every square yard of land is owned as private property, except such
portions as are occupied by roads, streets, prisons and a few other small
government properties, and I found that I had no legal right to live anywhere,
except in prison, unless some private owner of a portion of the land of my
birth sold me permission to live on his portion. And how was I to get the means
of purchasing such permission? I had no legal right to compel any private
individual to hire me as his servant. I was a legal person, with a legal name
and a legal constitution, but I had no legal
right to live except in a prison, a poorhouse or a lunatic asylum. I hoped
to find equitable statutes on this planet.

The
legal right to own the land of Dementia as private property is based upon
conquest. The proprietors are the heirs of foreign soldiers who invaded
Dementia, drove the people off their farms and destroyed their villages. And
our King (by the grace of Sol) claims to be a direct descendant of the chief of
the invading, conquering, devastating army of murderers, and the lineage is
considered honorable. I hoped to find wiser ideas on this planet.

During
my nine years of servitude in Dementia I felt rebellious towards society and
its statutes. I felt that I was under no moral obligation to respect the
statutes. I had entered into no contract, and therefore could not break one. I
had not even been asked or even permitted to endorse the statutes. They were
not in conformity with the laws of Sol, as revealed by Nature, and were not
even in conformity with the laws of the Book of Sol—the book which Dementian
society professed to reverence and implicitly believe. The book emphatically
recognised the right of the people to live by free labor. It commanded that the
land should be equitably shared amongst the people. It forbade usury, and it
denounced kingcraft and priestcraft. I hoped to find more honesty and less
hypocrisy on this planet.

Loyal
Dementians told me I should honor the King. But why should If He has never done
anything of use to me, and I have never heard that he had ever done any noble
or brave work, He has occupied much of his time in destroying innocent little
animals, and in gambling and wine-drinking.

The
only inventions I can remember that have been introduced by the royally-patented
nobility are:

The
Game of Spellakins.

The
Game of Tiddledewinks.

The
Game of Pony Polo.

The
Game of Dove Killing.

The
Game of Knocker Wrenching.

A
Pipe to smoke in Bed.

Transparent
Cards.

A
Walking-stick, with a Dagger concealed therein.

A
Double-headed Coin, for Tossing with.

The
Game of shooting large animals from a Safe Place. There are other similar
pastimes, such as the hunting of weak animals by troops of red-coated and
red-faced men, assisted by many large dogs.

There
are in Dementia two regular political parties, called the Tops and the Bottoms.
In the Tops are nearly all of the land-usurpers, and the Bottoms party works
for the interests of the money-profiters. Both parties are Royalists, and
neither of them has any desire to emancipate the disinherited working people. I
hoped to find the People governing on this planet.

I
did not blame our King, or his gang of lords; he correctly represented a
majority of the people, for most of the men drink, gamble and love cruel
sports. When Dementia is fit to have a nobler representative as its figure-head,
one will be peaceably chosen—not as governor, but as chief servant.

I
have seen on this planet you call the Earth, some countries named “Republics”
over which there should be imperial dictators until the people are better
qualified to elect legislators than the people of England and America are
today.

Some
of your kings resemble our king of Dementia, and some of your Presidents are
more oppressive than the most despotic of your kings. When the people are fit
for freedom they will be free; and then they will not need either President or
King. And I think that until you are fit for freedom you had better keep your
kings and provide for them a larger revenue than their richest subjects
receive; for it is well that your kings should be placed above the reach of
bribery.

I
have heard of a country in which the people live naked and unashamed; where
there is no hypocrisy, no usurer, no spirit-dealer, no prison, and where there
are no locks or bolts; a country in which all men and women do their share of
the little work that is needed where there is no war or usury and all work and
share equitably. I am going to that country, and I hope I may be permitted to
live and die there.

Farewell,
you people who are mad with avarice, boastful of robberies, saturated with
superstitions, rioting in vicious luxuries, adulterators, peculators,
pilferers, falsifiers, disguisers, equivocators—all you who fear the truth and
who are ashamed of the light. Farewell, also, you who have been degraded by
destitution and tortured by the scorn of the usurers. You will get your reward,
and so will they. Farewell to you who are preaching the true gospel—to all the
brave pioneers: your noble work will not be in vain. You are sowing the seed,
and the seed will bear fruit, and multiply. If it were possible to stay with
you, I would stay. But the gods are with you, and you will find some of the fruit
of your work in the heavens that are not now visible to you.

Farewell,
you hired Clerics, and you hired killers of men. Farewell, you most pitiful
usurers. Farewell, you tinselled kings!

Friday, April 18, 2014

I’M
rather glad to see that, Edison’s going to have another show,” said the
Commonplace Man, looking up from his paper.

“He’s
been rather out of it lately, hasn’t he?” queried the Cynic. “Which is strange,
seeing that people used to imagine that the faculty for invention was a close
monopoly of the great Anglo-Saxon family. The discovery by mere aliens of the
X-rays, wireless telegraphy, and radium, has rather exploded a theory which,
whatever else might have been said for it, had the merit of being comfortably
insular. What?”

“The
foreigner is sometimes capable of putting out a solitary invention, I grant
you,” said the Enthusiast. “But what of that? Edison has a whole string of them
to his credit.”

His
eyes kindling, he began to enumerate the list on his fingers. “ There was the
electric light,” he said, “the kinetoscope, the telephone, the —”

“The
phonograph!” broke in the Cynic, with a bitter sneer. “ That marvellous
instrument which has brought a surfeit of music into the homes of the humble!”

“Say
rather,” the Enthusiast returned impressively, “the instrument which has
enabled the clarion voice of a Gladstone to reverberate down the ages! “

The
Cynic laughed. “My dear fellow,” he said, “when you talk like that, it makes
me feel there ought to be a phonograph handy to receive your own utterances.
Still, I prefer to regard it as a musical entertainer on Suburbia’s lower
slopes.”

“I’ve
been seriously thinking about getting one,” said the Commonplace Man.

“Mind
you choose one of the smaller, quieter kinds,” counselled the Enthusiast.

“Not
so,” said the Cynic. “That would be arrant selfishness. He who lays in a
low-pressure phonograph benefits only his own household; but he who buys its
enlarged, trumpet - tongued edition, the gramophone, is a benefactor to the
whole street and a part of the next. Let others participate in your pleasures,
and your own enjoyment of them becomes all the keener. I am a convert, you see,
to the communal idea with regard to phonographs. They should be as ‘free’ asour
baths are free, our libraries, and our schools.”

“Haven’t
we had enough of them? “ inquired the Commonplace Man, plaintively.

“Enough
of the phonograph P” replied the Cynic, promptly. “I quite agree. \Ve’ve had
more than enough of it, although it’s only been before the world for a matter
of ten years or so. But what about this latest scheme of Edison’s?”

“Mr.
Edison hopes soon to invent a telephone which will carry not only sound, but
sight—that is, it will bring, not only the human voice along the wire, but the
image of the speaker as well. It may yet be that we shall sit by our own
firesides and see our kin across the sea, that we shall be ‘switched on’ from
our drawing-rooms to be present at some great battlefield, and that the streets
of all the world’s capitals will be familiar to those who never leave their
London.”

“Well,
that beats all,” was the Commonplace Man’s commentary, but the Cynic only
muttered, “Worse and worse.”

“Why
worse?” asked the Enthusiast, impatiently.

“Give
me time, and I might love the phonograph with all its faults, but this never!”
the Cynic replied.

“But
consider its possibilities, man,” the Enthusiast protested.

“That’s
just what I am doing,” was the Cynic’s sorrowful response. “ Here is one of
them. Suppose one has to transact business with some prolix, boresome,
unspeakable fellow, one is always careful, under the present régime, to impress
him with the fact that the telephone is a highly convenient and absurdly
accessible mode of communication. This avoids a personal contact which could
not be otherwise than distasteful. But now Edison’s perverted ingenuity would
rob us of this blessed security, and we shall not only have the piping,
ungrammatical voice of the fellow transmitted along the wires, but his dull,
vacuous face will be projected at us as well.”

“Pure
misanthropy,” said the Enthusiast.

“Nay,
only partial,” the Cynic replied, “which, paradoxical though it sounds, always
constitutes the truest practical philanthropy, for that involves, above all
things, a method of selection. Surely you don’t believe that the love of the
philanthropist, however abounding it may be, embraces every prig and bore who
seeks his friendship or taps his bounty?"

“This
is all very relevant to visual telephony!" sneered the Enthusiast.

“It’s
not so remote from the subject as you fancy,” the Cynic replied, with great
seriousness. “I observe the newspaper man there speaks of ‘our kin across the
sea.’ While I admire his novelty of phrasing, I can’t agree that the flashing
of instantaneous photographs across the wires would be a beneficial thing
either for Englishmen or Colonists. It might, indeed, tend to snap rather than
to strengthen the links of Empire.”

“What
unredeemed nonsense!” the

Enthusiast
retorted. “Little Englandism in its most naked and shameless condition.”

“Now,
don’t try to crush me with a party Shibboleth,” the Cynic cried, with reproach
in his voice. “Take the trouble to understand my point of view, and you will
discover that I am the soundest of patriots, the very biggest of Big
Englanders. For what, after all, is the main object of the cult of Imperialism?
What, but to keep the straggling masses of the Empire together. And, how can this
be effected if, every time the Englishman is rung up to receive a message over
the Antipodean cable, he actually sees the Australian who happens to be
speaking to him?"

The
Commonplace Man sniffed contemptuously. “Even if it were possible to telephone
to Australia,” he said, “which, of course, it isn’t, I don’t understand how
the visualisation of the speaker could have the effect you pretend to foresee.”

“Don’t
you,” said the Cynic, patiently. “Then let me explain. All Englishmen have an
impression of what the Australian is like, or what he ought to be like. Clad in
picturesque red shirt and slouched wide-brimmed hat, he is usually discovered
sitting listlessly over a bush fire. That yearning, pensive look in his eyes
tells you clearly enough that his thoughts are stealing back to the dear
homeland—the little English village, the weathered farmstead, the ivy-covered
church tower. It is a highly-sentimentalised picture, and not entirely devoid
of the romantic element, but an Australian friend of mine assures me that it
hasn’t the advantage of being true in the slightest particular. The red-shirted
Australian has no more tangible existence than the comic rustic of melodrama.”

“Let’s
have the truth, then,” growled the Enthusiast. .

“I
assure you, my friend,” the Cynic replied, “the truth isn’t always so
desirable. Illusions have a greater value than you perceive. It is only the
rash man who attempts to dispel them.”

“But
it may be that the real Australian,” said the Commonplace Man, “is a much finer
product than our sentimental conception of him.”

“Undoubtedly
he is,” said the Cynic, “but that is hardly the point. It is not the quality of
the Australian that we are discussing, but the dangers that might attend the
too sudden dissipation of an insular illusion. That kind of thing wants doing
very gradually.”

“Setting
the Colonies aside, I suppose you’ll admit that the visual telephone has what I
may call its domestic advantages?” timidly ventured the Commonplace Man.

The
Cynic laughed outright “Domestic!” he cried. “With that awful word you expose
the very worst side of Mr. Edison’s latest wonder. Can’t you see? At present,
when a friend calls at one’s office and suggests a night of—well, relaxation,
it is so easy telephone to an expectant spouse that so often successful excuse
for one’s absence which is based upon the high pressure of our modern
commercial system. The tedium in the voice convinces by adding the needed touch
of verisimilitude. But when not only one’s words, but one’s lineaments, are
shot over the wires into the domestic fastness, who but a consummate actor
could conceal the look of elation, the sense of pleasure anticipated, the —”

The
Commonplace Man shuddered. “I see what you mean,” he said.

“In
spite of your trivial arguments,” the Enthusiast remarked decisively, “the
sight telephone has some excellent features about it.”

“I
fear you’ll discover some ‘features’ in it which are not exactly excellent when
it’s in actual operation,” was the Cynic’s final rejoinder.